I never really mention it around here, but I keep a monthly log of
my long and short term fitness goals. I just keep in as a memo in
Microsoft Outlook. I have a reminder on my calendar to get me to
fill it out on the first of each month. I've been doing this for
about four years now.
I used to have a fear of getting fat again. I'm not so concerned
about it, now. But, we've all seen people lose weight, look good,
then a couple of years later, they're fat again. What happened?
Did they forget to not eat like a pig? Scale batteries needed
replacing, so they didn't notice? These aren't real reasons, of
course. We know the reason. Something else was wrong. I wrote a
little about that in
Fat & Happy.
What I'm talking about here is keeping your eye on the ball; long
term focus, long term goals. These are critical, but what many
don't realize is that short term goals are also very important.
Sometimes we need or want to do something that seemingly conflicts
with our long term goal.
This is most often evident with the goal of losing fat. Especially
with a lot to lose. When I started, about four years back, I was
235lbs. Things went pretty steadily for quite some time (about a
year or so), but I remember the frustration when I finally hit a
plateau. But, I continued, singlemindedly, and, of course, nothing
happened.
Luckily, Craig Ballantyne was around to give me a shove in the right
direction. Craig had me stop the fat loss programs for a while and
concentrate on maintaining my weight and maybe putting on a little
muscle.
I'll admit that I was a bit panicky about this. It seemed like such
a long and steady road for fat loss. I really felt like I was a
good month or two away from being "done." Can't stop now! But, in
reality, I'd been convinced that I was a good month or two out for
at least 9 months...
Craig whipped up quite a verbose email speech and sent it to me. It
said something like: "your body is in starvation. eat more for
short term. then back to long term." Someone's really got to teach
Craig to "net it out" and stop with the rambling...
Well, those three short phrases got me to thinking and realizing the
importance of long and short term goals, and the relationship that
each has to the other. I think you all get the point that I'm
trying to make, but just in case... Long term = war, short term =
battle.
Politics aside, we want to win our own war. Our war on bodyfat, in
this example. But, the battles, like in real life wars, can be
straightforward attacks, holding strategies, feints, and all sorts
of other things that I really know nothing about. We can even screw
up a battle, then turn the war around with the next battle. We can
sacrifice a battle win for the good of the war, too.
Most of these things have analogies in the war on bodyfat, too.
My own stall was halted by a period of heavier eating and a
different weightlifting style. I added some muscle, knocked my
metabolism back into gear, and was able to get the fat loss headed
in the right direction just a few weeks later.
So, this brings me back to my point. The importance to have, look
at, remember, and track both your long and your short term goals.
You might even think about sharing them with friends or family (or
maybe even someone supportive?).
Keeping the long term goal in mind makes taking those necessary, but
hopefully brief, paths down the seemingly wrong path okay. You may
still wince, but you can do it. Because you know it's necessary to
KEEP you on the right path. It's hard to keep up your motivation
without a long term goal with a definite end point.
Similarly, sometimes it's hard to keep motivated when a long term
goal might not end for a long time. Short term goals, by
definition, will come to an end shortly. Pretty satisfying, right?
So, the short term goals have multiple purposes. Justification for
that side trip that might not feel "right" but is and also serve as
something like "rest stop" on your way toward your long term goals.
A chance to reset your mind and refocus on the next short term goal,
and remind yourself that you are one step closer to your long term
goal.
So, the long and short of it is that I keep my logs with my monthly
(at least) updates. Since I started, I've added general fitness and
health into, too. Blood pressure, resting heart rate, cholesterol,
etc. It's nice to have once place to go back to, to see how I've
progressed. I wish I'd started sooner.
I've known a lot of you for a long time. I've seen progress pics
and stories. I know that you all have a variety of methods to track
your progress and keep your goals in site. I know because we've had
many threads on our progress, itself. But, I can't think of one
that actually talks about HOW we chart it. How about sharing your
methods?